7 Reasons Why Your Company May Need a Business Consultant

Who Are Business Consultants?

A business consultant is a specialist who analyzes the business, determines the critical factors hindering the development of the company, and finds growth points for its thriving. The consultant's task is to identify problems and blind spots, which are often difficult to detect by the company team, to build an effective roadmap to bring the company out of a crisis situation. Subsequently, the specialist can accompany the project to the set result and participate in the implementation of the recommended changes.

Getting out of the crisis is not the only task that consultants solve. A specialist identifies the company's problematic areas and determines effective and safe ways to work with them.

A business consultant helps:

- Modernize the company's activities;

- Improve the quality of interaction with partners;

- Increase profits;

- Optimize business processes.

Niche consultants specialize in working in a narrow area - a mining company is not suitable for a specialist with a qualification in the food industry. Non-niche consultants are generalists with diverse experience, for whom the niche is not important.

A business consultant may be a representative of a consulting agency or an independent unit. Private experts often have a narrow specialization, while the agency has at its disposal a whole staff of diversified professionals for all occasions. In the arsenal of consulting specialists there are a lot of business solutions in the field of law, finance, management, marketing, automation and other activities. These are:

- Business structuring;

- Transaction support;

- Registration or liquidation of the company;

- Bankruptcy;

- Tax consulting;

- Legal advice;

- Financial expertise;

- Grant support;

- Auditing;

- Marketing analysis;

- Development of a business plan;

- Development of an investment project;

- Search and selection of staff;

- Employee training;

- Introduction of automation, etc.

Consultants have developed a knowledge base and developed the ability to professionally solve various problems and achieve the goals set by the owners.

Such specialists are often hired for a short period of time, and to solve a specific problem, but many companies continue to cooperate with a consultant, and when the company's work returns to normal - the benefits of such interaction become obvious.

What Are the Benefits of Consultants?

Business owners are not always willing to turn to consultants, because this is an extra expense, and until the last moment, it may seem that there is no serious need to involve a third-party specialist. However, cooperation with a consulting specialist has a number of undeniable advantages:

1. Availability

Hiring a consultant in every sense will cost the company less than finding and maintaining an employee with the necessary competencies.

2. Independence

Where an employee of an organization can play up, rooting for their own interests, an outside specialist will express an unbiased view from the outside, because their only goal is to fulfill obligations and improve the work of the company.

3. Saving time

Managers often have good ideas for modernizing the company, but there is no time to analyze and implement them. The consultant not only copes with the task but also saves the resources of key specialists of the organization.

4. Expertise

Businesspeople often complain that they have to be a pro in everything in the world because no one else will control the quality of the work of employees. Hiring a professional consultant will eliminate the need to go into the nuances of business processes and make decisions beyond your own competence.

5. Experience

The consultant continuously studies ways to solve business problems and put them into practice regularly. It will not be difficult for a professional to orient himself and find the right trajectory of the path to the goal, even if he encounters new aspects for himself.

6. A fresh look

Employees of the company get stuck in a routine, look at the organization from the usual angle, and are not able to objectively assess the state of the business. The arrival of an external specialist is an opportunity to look from the outside and find the right direction for development.

7. Responsibility for unpopular decisions

It happens that the leader avoids changes in the company because of the unwillingness to lose the good attitude of employees. In such a situation, the consultant will take the fire and become a kind of scapegoat for the resentment of the staff.

The consultant is often viewed either as a last resort or, on the contrary, as a luxury extra for rich companies. In both cases, everything is either not so bad yet, or not good enough to contact a consulting agency. Meanwhile, a business consultant will be useful at any stage of the company's development - they will pull out the business if it is sinking or help it grow even bigger if things are going well. And if everything is fine, the consultant will become an indispensable adviser who will direct the company's resources in the right direction.

Consultants are quite expensive. However, the essence of the work of a consultant is to make the business work efficiently, and therefore make a profit. Therefore, the fee for the services of a consultant should be considered as an investment, not an expense.

How to Choose a Consultant?

Pay attention to their experience. An experienced consultant has internships, portfolios, cases, and clients with a good reputation. Experience in a large consulting firm would be a plus. The largest international companies do not hire random people and not everyone can handle the working rhythm of a consulting pro.

We also recommend assessing the personal success of the candidate. Is their own business flourishing? Have previous projects been successful? In what areas do they have experience? Were the clients satisfied with the results? Answers to these questions can be found on the candidate's personal website or blog.

Understand what they are talking about. To identify a specialist who exaggerates their merits, it is enough to ask them a few questions:

- What marketing tools do you use the most?

- How to calculate the effectiveness of the project?

- What are the key performance indicators for our organization?

After weeding out weak candidates, a group interview can be held. Watch how the roles are distributed in the group - who will become the leader, who will be the brain of the team, who will get lost among the other participants. Such a selection helps to see how the candidate solves issues in practice, and how structurally and creatively they think.

A good way to visually evaluate the experience of a consultant is to ask them to solve a business case. This assessment method can be used as an independent one - simulate a business situation close to the company's area; the task of the consultant is to analyze, study the financial side of the issue, formulate hypotheses and strategic alternatives, and select and justify the decision. Pay attention to the depth of study and the depth of the candidate’s thought, study by what indicators they determine effectiveness.

If the consultant was recommended to you by trustworthy people, keep in mind that recommendations are worth considering at least a couple of months after the end of the consultant's work. You can evaluate not only the positive impression of communicating with the specialist but also the actual results for the business.